


Ironic Regard

by nonky



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 00:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: Prompt by modestroad on LJ: Castle, Castle/Beckett, she's like an addiction





	Ironic Regard

Just because a woman was a goddess, didn't mean he had to worship her, he decided firmly. If she was as worth her weight in gold as he thought, she'd even appreciate his good sense.

Rick Castle made a deal with himself. He was going to be less available to Beckett, more withholding and independent. He was not going to follow behind her like a puppy, or drop everything when she called.

Their thing was stuck, at least until she wasn't dating a charitable heart surgeon who literally flew around healing the world. Castle understood and had stepped back accordingly. He didn't cheat and wouldn't want Beckett to cheat - even with him. The soft-gazing, long-suffering persona he'd established to gain her confidence was going back in the box.

It would be pathetic to cling to little moments of connection, huddled over freshly-murdered corpses on cold winter mornings. It was even a bit sick. From now on, he was her partner. He would watch her back, throw around ideas, give her his read on people. He was not going to camp out while she filled Josh's night shift with paperwork. He was not going to coax her away to have a drink at his bar.

Castle had gotten used to his relative fame, notched a little above off-Broadway players and a little below NYC indie band members. He knew people noticed him and shrugged it off without being upset. He had wanted the kudos and the fans. It was petty to be flustered when he had what he wanted, bolstered on the kind of dream career most writers only plotted in feel-good movies.

He had yet to figure a graceful way out of the scrutiny for the people who came with him.

His pride had been stung when he heard a little clutch of uniforms sneering over his following Beckett. They were making crass suppositions on the fascination she held and exactly how a female detective was a superior example of police work than any of her male colleagues. Castle hadn't realized how easily tarnished a reputation could be. Those officers were likely only parroting things repeated a thousand times since Heat Wave's first printing.

The instinct to step in and correct their manners was strong, but it wouldn't solve anything. He had to be smart and show up all the gossips who looked at Beckett as a conquest - for him or anyone else. The men who went into a crime scene at her back had to be respectful of her abilities.

The solution was one of those pragmatic, quiet tactics he might never have learned in his mother's dramatic rearing; two steps back and a little self-control. He would quit haunting the precinct and spend some time on things other than watching Kate. He would work hard, maybe get his next book in before deadline.

Beckett didn't need him to do her job, and he'd long since memorized everything about her to the point staring was merely their status quo. She would never miss him, and he would stop providing grist for the rumour mill.


End file.
